A new and virulent form of Jensenism ...

(Above: Dennis Jensen, scientist, in action).

How do you know you're in the company of a man who aspires to be Humpty Dumpty?

Here's a clue:

I am of the view that affirmative action is racist, sexist and ethnist, but understand people will, of course, seek every competitive advantage they can to progress themselves and their careers.

Ethnist?

As the wise Dr. Google sagely notes when you embark on a word search, "did you mean ethnicity?"

You won't find a definition for 'ethnist' and 'ethnism' in a conventional dictionary, though you can find the words deployed on raving ratbag right wing sites, and you can find it flung about in books that should know better:

Going even further than assimilation ideology, ethnist ideology defines the members of its state in ethnically exclusive terms, establishing a sort of blood citizenship determined by birth or kinship. (here)

That doesn't have much to do with talk of ethnist, sexist and racist, mainly because it seems as if the words have been flung together because they kind of rhyme.

But on the principle that words can mean what you chose them to mean, let's move along.

How do you know you're in the company of a delusional reactionary ratbag?

All that happens with an attempt at providing anodised content is that people will go elsewhere, the result that we can clearly see with Fairfax media.
The likes of Gina Rinehart see this risk, and are attempting to do something to arrest the decline, but the editors and boards are simply ignoring the real worldview, and simply hope that things will change for the better. Faint hope.

Would that be the same Gina Rinehart currently on the board of network Ten, presenting content so anodised, it makes tin-plating seem like sterling silver? From Being Lara Bingle to The Shire, are Rinehart and her colleagues on the board on a mission to reduce the network's output to the level of blithering idiocy?

Master Chef aside, is it true that the board of Ten is simply ignoring the real world view, with earnings falling by 70% to the six months to the end of February, with ratings down and advertisers leaving? (Not rating: Network Ten earnings take a hit)? Is the board simply hoping that things will change for the better, now they've raised another $200 million to piss against the wall on bad programming? Faint hope.

Who could be writing this sort of gibberish, who could be putting such faith in the powers of Gina Rinehart?

Come on down Dennis Jensen, banging on for The Drum in Reaping the consequences of political correctness.

Now you might think that in these recent troubled, intertubes-laden times, all newspapers, of whatever political hue, have been having a hard time. Whether it's the New York Post or the New York Times, the times have been hard, and finding a way to a new model has been tough.

If it was just a matter of being a raving ratbag right wing rag, why The Australian would be doing swimmingly well.

But like other Murdoch publications, it's struggling, sheltered and supported by more successful tabloid kin, who don't make their money out of being a home to raving ratbags, but by being focussed on sport, and in the winter months on various forms of thuggery known quaintly as football ...

You might even think that Fairfax has more than its fair share of opinion writers of a right wing kind, including, but not limited to Paul Sheehan, Gerard Henderson, Peter Costello, and sundry IPA figures such as Chris Berg. Sure they're a motley bunch of ruffians and roughnecks, but they're right up there with the Murdoch crowd.

But according to Jensen, Fairfax is on the ropes solely because it's leftist media:

The Left are finding their print media is dying the death of a thousand cuts of political correctness, making their publications so denuded of any content that genuinely challenges and is genuinely interesting that people choose not to purchase the paper.
The internet now gives people a huge choice, as it is impossible to muzzle opinions in the online environment to the extent that webzines can publish anonymously using a host in a more benevolent environment.

The thing about ideologues and zealots is that they routinely do the hammer thing, and when they look around they can only see nails. From the wrong end of the telescope, if you like your cliches complete.

So Fairfax is full of evil socialists, and greenies and sandal-wearers and is failing and it's got nothing to do with the rivers of gold going elsewhere, and print on its last legs, and many other alternatives available - Huffington, for example, if you want a liberal pinko pervert skew ...

And how has Jensen delivered his peculiar, bile-filled insight? Via an ABC online forum ... pitching it to the cardigan wearers, thanks to the long suffering taxpayers of the land.

If it weren't so side-splitting funny, it'd be sad, because Jensen is the Liberal member for Tangney, named after the first woman member of the Australian Senate. They bring 'em in, and then they bring them up kinda funny in the west ...

Jensen previously achieved a nanosecond of fame by slurping down a can of carbon-dioxide loaded fizzy drink as irrefutable proof that climate science is wrong (you can still catch this amazing sight in the 7.30 archives here).

Which reminds the pond why it hates people with Ph.D's trading as doctors. (Jensen's is from Monash, and according to his wiki, it's in materials engineering on ceramics, or has his own site says, in materials science and physics).

Suffice to say, if you're in a theatre, and a cry rings out "is there a doctor in the house", let's hope the crisis involves ceramics.

Jensen, in posing as a climate sceptic, consistently trades off on his science pedigree, while delivering libertarian bon mots such as this:

To précis Talentyre, I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Which is guaranteed to bring out the pedant in the pond, since in his attempt at cleverness and avoiding Voltaire, he mis-spells S. G. Tallentyre, which is the pseudonym for Evelyn Beatrice Hall (here). And the pond simply can't defend your right to mis-spell names, and certainly not to the death.

Anyhoo, Jensen is the sort of pontificator who just loves to make unsubstantiated assertions, as when he maintains the brooding over the Andrew Bolt case:

The result of Bolt's case is extremely damaging to freedom of speech in Australia, to the point where many journalists and other commentators are now less inclined to speak their minds for fear of litigation. It has also given those on the Left occasion to silence any views that differ from their "accepted worldview".

A pity then that somehow the result of the Bolt case hasn't managed to shut up Jensen, always up for the job of silencing any views that differ from his own accepted worldview. Truth to tell, Bolt got things wrong, and paid the price, and nothing much happened thereafter, except that he and his chums have nursed his ongoing wounded pride for an eternity.

These days the main damage to freedom of speech is the way the arch-reactionary has removed all comments from his blog (and even now his larrikin devotees aren't being allowed their say beneath the fold).

As well as shedding tears for the suffering Bolt, it turns out that Ray Hadley is wonderful, but hapless, and hideously bullied by Wayne Swan. Poor Ray's just quivering jelly when confronted by a rooster on the march.

And News Ltd papers are wonderful, because they print the truth, which just so happens to be Jensenist truth.

What is it about the name Jensen?

Yep, News Ltd epitomises "fair and balanced" reporting, and never mind the tilt.

Like any decent extremist, Jensen knows how to fling alarmist words around (yes while berating climate scientists for being alarmist, Jensen knows how to live in a state of alarm):

The Deputy Prime Minister has chosen a slippery slope with a very deliberate step towards totalitarianism. I never thought I would fear for freedom of speech in a bulwark of democracy such as Australia.

Totalitarianism on the march! Slippery slope! Jackboots on cobblestones! Neo Labor Nazis on the move!

And so on and so forth. And Jensen has sat at the foot of his masters, and imbibed their lessons and thoughts well:

For those who don't like the editorial policy of a certain print publication, save the gold coin cost of the newspaper. Better still: put your money where your mouth is. Join like-minded people and stump up to become publishers.

Become a publisher? The pond would like a gold coin for each time this blithe proposal has come from a member of the News Ltd commentariat.

Just one humble request. Could we start by inheriting a newspaper, as a way to get going? Nothing grand, just a rag in a town of a million or so people. It'll be ever so helpful ...

Jensen also drew attention to himself by turning his back - which is to say refusing to attend the stolen generation apology - and he passes himself off as an expert not just on climate change, but on the joint strike fighter debate and the National Broadband network.

It turns out that his attitude to a wired society is about as luddite as can be managed in an incoherent rant, involving rage, fear and doubt (as you can read for yourself in NBN Debacle).

Never mind. The pond is taking the odds on whether Jensen will score a ministry down the track, or even become an attendant lord to a minister.

After inspecting the runes, what are the chances that Jensen will prove too extreme and divisive a figure, even for Tony Abbott?

Meanwhile, speaking of News and Murdoch, any number of people have noted the response of that arch twitterer Rupert Murdoch to the charging of Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson.

Which is to say not a whit, a jot or a twit. Guy Rundle tips the nod in Rundle: the nightmare of the fatally weak at News' top, while Paul Barry also notes the chairman has gone missing in Ex-NotW editors charged: so where's Rupert?

Instead the chairman has taken to berating the British government and politicians:

Who will speak up

For honest underpaid

Brit working families?

Tories, Lib-dems,

Labour, even Church,

All seem broken,

Or breaking ...

British ministers,

Others,

Admit paying cash for jobs.

Seems black economy

Beats future cashless society.

Maybe Square will cure.

Now that could have turned into a self-aware beauty:

British newspaper proprietors,

Others,

Admit having contempt for law.

Seems contempt

Beats useful contribution to society.

Maybe Leveson will cure.

But it's this gnomic chairman Mao style haiku that really caught the eye:

Let's be positive.

For all our correct

Self-criticisms

Why does half the world

Want to come here?

There is always more poetry to hand on the twitter stream here.

No doubt Dennis Jensen goes there each day for a bout of correct self-criticisms ...

(Below: usually the pond would now run a few Bingle images in search of the Bingle bump, but the pirates have been slow to make the latest episode available. What's that you say? It's because Bingle is a bust? No never, not sweet Lara.

Well how about searching the The Shire for a sexual surge? What's that you say? The Shire's ratings seriously suck? Oh Gina, Gina, and Dr Jensen was counting on you to take Ten and Fairfax into the promised land. Could it be a leftist plot that's ruined such fine programming? Or is it the good taste of the audience?)

Drinking the Olympic kool-aid with Boris ...

(Above: a few images from Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia. By golly that fascist kool aid is tasty).

Boris Johnson, mayor of London, seems like an amiable twit, and it seems equally fair to say that What does a bike race have to do with the economy? is a most amiable form of twittery.

Johnson goes into an extended rhapsody about the meaning of the Olympic games, and manages to sound like Adolf Hitler just before the Berlin Olympics:

As you listen, you realise that these performances were the result not just of physical genius, but also of colossal intellectual and emotional effort - years of self-discipline. The Olympics, in other words, is about character. It's about the will. Of course, as Baron de Coubertin was at pains to point out, it is not all about winning. But if you want to win, then you need to work. That is the basic message of the Olympics.

Okay, there's a dollar in the Godwin's Law Triumph of the Will swear jar, but at least it allowed the pond to run a few snaps from Leni Riefensthal's Olympia, which usually produces a bump right up there with the Lara Bingle bump.

Every four years the same sort of blather is dragged out of the closet, and young people are invited to learn:

Young people are going to see it demonstrated, before their eyes, on the grandest possible stage and in the most vivid and exciting way. Of course you need all sorts of things to have a chance of success. You need opportunity. You need people to take an interest in you and coach you.

Sensible young people will hopefully read Squatting in the village and naked lunches: athletes come clean on Olympics debauchery, and learn about the most vivid and exciting opportunities that might come their way in an Olympics:

As the curtain falls on more events, the action accelerates. "Athletes are extremists," Solo says. "When they're training, it's laser focus. When they go out for a drink, it's 20 drinks. With a once-in-a-lifetime experience, you want to build memories, whether it's sexual, partying or on the field. I've seen people having sex right out in the open."

This does create supply and demand issues:

It was in 1992 that the image of a celibate Games began to flicker when it was reported that the Barcelona Games' organisers had ordered in prophylactics like pizza. Then, at the 2000 Sydney Games, 70,000 condoms weren't enough, prompting a second order of 20,000 and a new standing order of 100,000 condoms per Olympics.

Yes young people, remember the Olympics isn't just triumph of the will, it's triumph of the fuck and the one night stand.

But do go on sweet Boris, about that will to win:

But you also need to understand that success - in any field - means drive, the will to win, resolve to do things that are dull, repetitive, uncool and very often painful and exhausting.
Yes, of course the Olympics is about legacy, sustainability, diversity, inclusivity, posterity and multiculturality. But it is really about competition between human beings; the glory of winning, the pathos of losing, and the toil that can make the difference. That is the grand moral of the Games, and a very good one, too. It is also the key to economic growth.

Say what? The key to economic growth?

Oh come on Boris, you're not pretending that the Olympics is a paean to individual effort, and entrepreneurial free market activities?

Yes, yes, you are:

As you listen, you realise that these performances were the result not just of physical genius, but also of colossal intellectual and emotional effort - years of self-discipline. The Olympics, in other words, is about character. It's about the will. Of course, as Baron de Coubertin was at pains to point out, it is not all about winning. But if you want to win, then you need to work. That is the basic message of the Olympics.

If you want to win, then you need to work.

Surely that should have read, if you want to win, then you need a government grant.

Well actually if you want to stage an Olympics, you need a bloody big government grant. The Olympics site happily notes that the National Lottery has kicked in £2.2 billion for facilities, and a tidy £66 million for the Paralympic Games. The Greater London Authority is contributing a handsome £925 million, so that any bright eyed bushy-tailed entrepreneur can learn the basic message of the Olympics.

Privatise the profits, and socialise the losses, organise the junkets and have a bloody good time, but make sure you also blather on about legacy benefits, and improved facilities, and make sure no one visits towns suffering from Olympic blight, with the said facilities fallen into disrepair and disuse.

Meanwhile, if you want to win as an athlete, make sure you get a nice little earner, a government stipend. That'll guarantee you heaps of support, trainers, coaches, scientists, all armed with neat state of the art gear and dedicated to helping you succeed.

It also means you've got something to fall back on if the advertising revenue drops off, or if your sport doesn't attract liar firms wanting to use your reputation to explain how the bulk sugar, salt and other crap in cereals offer you an Iron man capacity to succeed.

Yep, take a leaf out of Australia's book.

What better role model for socialist sport than East Germany and the Soviets:

To reboot the country’s athletic program, the government decided to create an academy modeled in part on the sports factories of the Eastern Bloc. Throughout the Cold War, the Soviets and other Warsaw Pact countries saw sporting events as an opportunity to demonstrate the superiority of the communist way of life. Nearly every child was tested at an early age, and those who showed particular promise were shipped to the academies, where they trained year-round. (Unfortunately, the athletes were often given performance-enhancing drugs, sometimes without their knowledge.) These programs were funded and closely monitored by the central government.
AIS hoped to capture the intensity and success of the Soviet academies, without going to the same excesses. The idea was simple: Get the best coaches and the best athletes together on a year-round basis, without any distractions, and hope that athletic magic would result. (here)

Yep, Australia has shown the world the way forward.

East German socialism, and luckily the British have learned the lesson well:

Australia’s success has been accompanied by a boom in investment in sports science around the world. The UK, in the run-up to the London Olympics, has been spending about $160 million a year on UK Sport, its own high-performance athletic program. Canada’s “Own the Podium” program spent nearly $100 million in the run-up to the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver. Qatar has established the Aspire Academy for Sports Excellence in Doha, hiring several AIS alums to help develop the program. And China, hewing to the state-controlled model, has enrolled 360,000 students in 3,000 sports schools across the country.

UK Sport? Why it's the next best thing to East Germany, and it has a snazzy .gov website here proudly boasting about the bundle of goodies it's dropping on British athletes.

The pond resolved not to write about the Olympics, but really what to do when confronted by amiable simple-minded trolling by Boris?

If the key to economic growth is the Olympics, then the future is socialism. And who can argue with that?

Well maybe not. Maybe the security cock-up at the London Olympics suggests the best way forward for the canny private sector. Replace the government, get the contract, fuck up, and thumb your nose as you walk out the door with the moola, while the hapless government brings in the army to sort things out.

Will that change? Not bloody likely, as you can read in Privatising security set to increase despite Olympics row.

These days G4S has its very own tag for the Guardian's coverage of its assorted scandals, but happily Australians sleep much more safely at night knowing that the company helps run Australian prisons, and delivers security to the country in a firmly privatised socialistic way. Oh there might be the odd squawk of concern and alarm - as in Deal set despite prison firm's 'lethal' past - but if you want to be a winner, as an athlete or as a business, make sure you get your paws on some of that government moola.

And that, thanks to the twittery of dear sweet Boris, is the lesson for the day.

The key to economic growth, and personal athletic success, is a government grant to do stuff. Or not, if the mood and the whim takes you, and actually organising the security is too tricky.

What do we want? East Germany! When do we want it? Now, or at least until the London Olympics are over ...

And the next time you read some tosser like Gerard Henderson or Campbell Newman going on about lavish government subsidy for writers, their festivals, and other artists and their activities, see if you can find a single murmur from these wankers about the money shovelled down the throats of athletes so they can shave a micro second off and win a glittering medal. Or at least get to burn through a dozen condoms ...

By golly Boris, you've got a problem with your pitch.

Even Chris Berg thinks the Olympics are creepy, proposing that the Games symbolism is steeped in fundamentalism, militarism and fascism, as you can read in Let the cult begin. You can't even get the IPA on side!

The Olympics do nothing to achieve global harmony. They arguably work against it. If harmony was the goal, athletes would compete as individuals, not on behalf of nations.
Do the Olympic ideologists honestly believe the nonsense they spout? The Games are a taxpayer-funded cash cow for all involved, and that's probably motive enough for many. Yet Olympism offers a sense of mission. It's not like the World Cup or the Commonwealth Games. The Olympics is a cause. It is a full-blown belief system.
Rogge said in his UN speech he wanted to place ''sport at the service of mankind''. Maybe he does. But right now, sport is serving the weird ideology of the Olympics much more than humanity.

Truly the world is a wondrous place, and passing stuffed and comprehensively fucked as well.

Is that the grand moral of the Games, Boris, and a very good one too?

And now enough already about the Games. Henceforth the pond's lips are zipped ...

(Below: but not before offering a few more images for the discreet gentleman reader).

Dr. Henderson Jekyll, say hello to Mr. Henderson Hyde ...

(Above: great absent god, can it be?)

It's old news that Gerard Henderson is inclined to a peculiar literary form of schizophrenia.

In his writing style, and who knows in what else.

In his Media Watch Dog newsletter - go on, read the latest edition, trash at least ten per cent of the few remaining working brain cells you have - Henderson is inclined to flamboyant headlines, calling for example the 2012 Melbourne Writers Festival "another sandalista occasion for inner city leftist luvvies".

It's puerile and childish, the kind of writing that's safely at home on the pond, which specialises in childish insults.

But the newsletter is also revealing of Henderson's extraordinary set of tics and neuroses.

He likes, for example, to call The Age, Melbourne's flailing newspaper, The Guardian on the Yarra, as if calling a paper after the British rag that began the process of degutting the British newspaper empire of Rupert Murdoch - still going on with a flurry of Murdochian resignations - is somehow an insult. If only The Age could call itself The Guardian, even in jest ...

Even more bizarrely, for reasons best known to the guardians of The Guardian of the Yarra, it publishes Henderson within its pages. And what does this say of Henderson, that he would befoul and abuse the nest, rather than do the honourable thing, and trot off elsewhere to unload his guff on the world? It's a peculiarly ill bird that fouls its own nest, and sends up its own perch ...

The funniest thing? The media watch dog prattles on about being on the couch, and tut tutts about Mark Latham morphing, which leaves you wondering when the dog will realise its own exegesis is a prime example of a man morphing into a couch, mistaking the world for a hat, and consequently in serious need of a shrink.

But it is interesting in the dog pages how Mr. Hyde lets down his guard, and comes out swinging like a psychotic. It seems, for example, that Four Corners mugged George Pell, which makes you wonder how the media dog would describe the activities of Catholic priests in relation to their child victims, and the church in relation to decades of cover ups.

Nancy’s co-owner believes that no Christian should venture on to ABC hostile territory unless an agreed interview is either live or live-to-air.

Ah a dash of paranoia to mix with the schizo world view.

Anyhoo, it's a truly weird experience, bordering on the dysfunctional and the disturbed and a thrashing and a mashing and a bashing and a cheap scoring and payback and the settling of the scores, and snidery usually as funny as a baseball bat to the head, as Mr Hyde roams the pages with whip and cane.

But then when you read the other Henderson - perhaps we should think of this version as Dr Jekyll in contrast to the Henderson in the grip of the media dog Hyde - you realise why Henderson is perfectly at home in the world of Robert Louis Stevenson.

For lo and behold, with Mr. Hyde hidden in the Sydney Institute cupboard, solemn, staid, painfully dull Dr. Jekyll turns up this morning writing like a great aunt from Adelaide in Dumping PM won't stem bleeding caused by thorny Greens.

Yep, it's the pontificating Dr. Jekyll on view, producing the usual desiccated, prissy, preening prose that makes Shakespeare's prattling Polonius seem like a live wire wit.

Henderson gives the impression sometimes of being a Chairman Mao clock in urgent need of a winding up. Along with the usual biased history lesson, which opens the piece, how many times have his faithful readers had to endure this kind of repetitious sludge?

Australian voters are smart. Middle to lower-income groups, living in the suburbs and regional centres, know that the inner-city left looks down on them and secretly would like to see the secondary and primary industries where they work (in particular, timber and mining) close down. The inner-city left's agenda also favours higher energy prices as part of its agenda to reduce human-initiated climate change.

Oh sweet long absent Jesus, it's the man from 41 Phillip Street in the heart of Sydney yet again at one with people living in the suburbs and the regional centres - yes Penrith, why aren't you home to the Sydney Institute? - while the sniggering, snickering, sinister inner city elites look down on them.

Is it possible to work any more moth-eaten cliches into the text? Sure thing:

Likewise, social conservatives in the suburbs and regional centres who are religious believers resent being sneered at by the inner-city left because of their faith, or their decision to support non-government schools, or on account of their opposition to same-sex marriage.

Yes Christians whatever you do, don't speak to the ABC's flock of Christians as they compile the Religion and ethics report. Let's get rid of the damn show, eh. The sneering secularists thought they'd killed it off, but the wretched thing has risen from the dead.

What's that you say, rural listeners actually listen to ABC radio, including (the absent god help us) Macca on a Sunday, and understand that the organisation's not a monolith, but a multi-hued tabernacle for people of many persuasions?

You mean rural folk are more sensible than a blithering, blathering paranoid like Henderson? Isn't that bizarre, since Henderson in his writing shows signs of listening to and watching the ABC almost 24/7, and commercial radio and television is treated as an unwatched, unreferenced waste land. No Lara Bingle bump for Henderson ...

Doesn't he like commercials?

Say it ain't so. But ain't it grand to see Henderson align himself with creationist and fundamentalist Islamic and Scientological non-government schools, as they beaver away indoctrinating their children in sundry bizarre beliefs thanks to taxpayers, and how engaging to think that the inner city elitists have the power to skew polls.

Yep, when you read New poll backs same-sex marriage, with two thirds of Australians on board in a statistically representative way, remember that prattling Polonius thinks the survey was conducted only in Newtown, Brunswick, Mile End and Bardon.

And so to the pompous conclusion:

Abbott's views have much more support in the wider electorate than those of most journalists and academics. That's why many commentators have failed to detect the damage to Labor's brand caused by its association with the Greens.

Yep, that'd be most journalists, excluding most of the journalists who work for News Ltd and commercial television, which just happens to be most of the journalists going the rounds, but we all know what we mean by most journalists.

Pravda on the Yarra, the showcase for the thoughts of Gerard Henderson, a beacon of light surrounded by the dark forces of greenies, sandal-wearers and elbow-patch academics.

The sooner we get back to the business of sending boat people to the bottom of the sea, and using military force to ground them to pulp, the sooner we can get on with the business of worshipping Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a man with genuine Australian Gerard Hendersonian Tony Abbott values.

And the sooner we can forget all about this jibber jabber about climate science - when really it's all the fault of inner urban elites who just want higher power bills - why the sooner the world will be a better place, and Penrith can have first class beaches ...

Or some such thing ...

Conclusion? Well in keeping with the way of many movies intent on exploiting Joseph Campbell's notions of mythology, the pond has a sneaking regard for the childish, puerile abuse unloaded by Henderson in Mr. Hyde mode. It has the ring of adolescent honesty, like a teenager scribbling abuse in a diary at all those people and things that vex him.

And it's perfectly suited to loon pond, the siren song of one loon to another.

But when Henderson dons his Dr. Jekyll garb, he has to resort to disingenuous, tendentious, tedious devices to disguise his simple message - Tony Abbott the messiah, rah rah Christianity, red necks wonderful, creationism powerful alternative to sneering greenie inner city secularist belief system, gay marriage evil, hiss boo the ABC, the Chaser lads Satan's representatives on earth, how the pious Catholic church suffers, what paedophile victims, where, and did I ever tell you about the the true but rocky, extremely hard path of the climate denialist ... and the suffering of feet forced to wear hard leather boots because they can never ever touch sandals ....

Yep, it's so much simpler and so much more fun to let the mad dog run amok than to look at Jekyll Henderson pretending to be a solemn, staid, respectable member of the commentariat ... and to read the boring, painfully dull, repetitious prose that arises from the pose. No wonder Henderson mocks writers' festivals ... the average graphic novel has more literary meat in it.

Sadly it's just not possible to make this relentless repetition, week in, week out, sound new and refreshing and insightful.

It's a task at which Jekyll Henderson routinely fails, as he drags out and dusts off inner-city elites for yet another go around the track.

Mark Latham sometimes proposes that Henderson's columns are a comedy of errors, but really they're just a comedy, and a rather sad and paranoid one at that ...

It's time to stop hiding the Hyde. Unleash the hound, put it on display in the Guardian on the Yarra, and let the cards and the cane and the whip fall where they may ...

(Below: Gerard Henderson, dourly impersonating Sauron or the emperor in Star Wars for your pleasure.

Below him, are these the sort of rural folk, country cousins, he feels more comfortable around? Needless to say they know what to do with atheists, secularists, and sandal-wearing greenies, journalists and academics. Show the way Levi, it looks like Mr Henderson is in urgent need of a style guide, sitting there stitched up like a stuffed suit).

Pond readers alert, who do you trust, the Wiggles or Chairman Rupert?

(Above: you might consider this a promotional plug for coeliacs, but actually it's a plug for spreading yeast all over News Ltd).

The pond just had to know.

It wasn't enough to read Dick Smith's outraged outburst to Kim Williams, in lieu of Chairman Rupert Murdoch, and available here for your delectation in pdf form.

What was the deeper truth?

It may not be so serious if your boss, who has so much influence in Australia, was respected and trusted by most Australians. The opposite is, in fact, the case. Just recently he was voted as one of the least trusted. He was placed number 97 on the Readers Digest "Who Do We Trust 2012" list. Only an errant footballer and a foul-mouthed shock-jock were held in lower esteem by the Australian people. Of course, you made sure there was no mention in the Murdoch media of this as all of your journalists worldwide "self-censored" on this issue. Once again, what about your "freedom of the press" claims?

Errant footballer?

The pond's gots ta know, and it turns out that after Rupert Murdoch"businessman" at number 97, there's Brendan Fevola, "former AFL player", holding down number 98.

The foul-mouthed shock jock?

Yep, there at number 99 was Kyle Sandilands, "radio personality".

But it got better. Sure Chairman Rupert was down in the basement with the riff raff, but hell's bells, he couldn't even beat Nick D'Arcy home, as the king hitter held down the number 96 slot (please, no jokes about Australian television classics).

Now the pond would usually refer to the Reader's Digest about once a century, but Australia's Most Trusted People 2012 list is a hoot.

What on earth did Hugh Jackman do to score third place? And who on earth did Mary Donaldson, crown princess of Denmark, fuck to make it to fourth place?

You can see why Dick was pleased, because he came in at number five, ahead of Father Chris Riley, but please explain Maggie Beer at 13 and Rebecca Gibney at 14. Heck don't get the pond wrong, we loves 'Bec, she likes a red wine and she had the good sense to marry production designer Richard Bell, and move to Launceston, but never forget she's originally a New Zealander!

At least they put her ahead of The Wiggles, medieval torturers of children (do you ever wonder why you're sometimes full of murderous rage, haunted and tormented by childhood memories?), who lurk at 15, but what must Geoffrey Rush think scoring position 16? Not even as trusted as a Wiggle?

Did the public realise all that blather about Rach 3 being exceptionally tricky was just an excuse to score a fortune being a pirate in the Caribbean?

The pond could go on for hours - there's John Farnham at 20, followed by Jackman's squeeze at 21, and Cate at 22, and ye ancient cats and falling off ladders dogs, Molly Medrum at 23.

Sweet Jesus, is that Adam Hills at 30 and Kylie Mingoue at 32?

And it seems that Grigor Jordan doc didn't do Thorpie any harm, because there he is at 37. And he beats Patti Newton, who can only manage 40, way ahead of Gerry Harvey at 67 and Lindsay Fox at 68. It's left to Glenn Stevens to score the 69 position. Oh Glenn if only we'd known you were a swinger.

But it's the political fall out that finally compels. There's Kevin Rudd lurking at 74, and he's only a couple of positions behind Eddie McGuire, who has something to do with Collingwood, and therefore qualifies as a Satanist!

More astonishing the Ruddster, by hitting that grand position, trailing behind spivs, actors and deadbeats, earned the title of Australia's most trusted politician. This is trust? And just to crank the nausea screws, the Reader's Digest decided to quote the man:

“A fulfilled life is one which always gives to others. The unfulfilled life is one which only gives to yourself. This is the wisdom of the ages and … is so deeply enmeshed in our national soul [it’s] now part of our national DNA. We call it the fair go, and the most fulfilled of us are the ones out there in the business of giving. The most unfulfilled are those who are simply looking after me, myself and I.” Kevin Rudd, from a speech delivered on January 18, 2012 (here)

This from a man who plays politics with the rustic vigour of a Queenslander, sending his wife in to bat, blathering on to the Women's Weekly, seemingly unfulfilled as he goes about the business of looking after "me, myself and I" and his outrageously deluded ambitions.

Not to worry, back to the list so that we can marvel at Julian Assange scoring 75 and beating Malcolm Turnbull.

But it's a close run thing because big Mal fills 76, the second most trustworthy Aussie politician, and have we got an email scoop for you, while Campbell Newman takes 77. See, it pays to fuck over public servants and writers big time! Go Queenslanders ... to the dole office.

Amazingly Penny Wong takes 79 - didn't someone mention she's a dangerous lesbian who terrifies the Sydney Anglican Jensenists - while Joe Hockey at 80 trounces Bob Carr, who can only reach 81 by standing on the shoulders of Twiggy, who fills 82. By golly, Bob needs to chat a little longer with Mitt Romney about the ways the Kenyan socialist has ruined the country.

Amazingly Julie Bishop takes 84, while Tony Abbott can only hit 91, and Andrew Wilkie at 83 shows Gina Rinehart the door at 85.

Throw in Bob Katter at 87, even stevens with Alan Joyce at 87, and Barnaby Joyce at 89, and there's the sneaking suspicion that this list is comprehensively fucked. Sure the Wiggles beat the lot of them, but these days being in the Wiggles is like being caught in a revolving door.

Sweet Jesus, is that Clive Palmer claiming 92, while Wayne Swan can only manage 93, and Shane Warne at 94 trumps Julia Gillard at 95, and so we return to good old king hit Nick at 96?

Well Dick, it has to be said, and so the pond will say it.

Claiming in any way shape or form that this list represents the "esteem of the Australian people" as opposed to a disparate bunch of no hoper Reader's Digest readers is just not on.

The pond hasn't looked at the Reader's Digest since flicking through Laughter is the best medicine at an appointment with the dentist, and it's sad to say, there were no laughs, and be buggered if the dentist was the best medicine. Whenever the pond thinks of the Reader's Digest, it thinks of cardigans, and old Queenslanders murmuring "that Kevin he's such a nice lad, and a Christian too", and nothing's changed.

Now usually the pond would think of Dick Smith as a doofus, since he illustrates perfectly the wisdom of Samuel Johnson proposing that patriotism is the last refuge of the OzEmite scoundrel.

But at the same time the pond loves anyone who can stick it up Kim Williams, AM, a difficult task at the best of times, since Williams is so firmly up his own fundament on a 24/7 basis.

Never mind, what joy being a millionaire where you need never give a flying fuck, and so can talk truth to power, and deliver a few bon mots by the bucketload:

Of course, I would normally write this letter to your boss, Rupert Murdoch, directly. However, in his last letter to me of 1 June 2011, he showed how sensitive he was to any criticism by rejecting further communication. This was because he was offended by my criticism of the Daily Telegraph for its front-page attack of Cate Blanchett when she dared to support the carbon tax. Isn't it amazing - Rupert Murdoch tells people, "Climate change poses clear catastrophic risks" and claims he made News Limited carbon-neutral and he is treated like a hero by you and your colleagues, whereas Cate Blanchett is attacked so more papers could be sold and more profits made!

Let's leave aside that the pond is allergic to Cate Blanchett, who has done more to ruin good movies than the average run of working actors, and focus on the bigger charge.

Has Dick Smith only recently worked out that News Ltd is a direct equivalent for the good folk who built Machu Picchu?

It sometimes helps to have the long view, and to understand why, after the demise of the Sun King, all that was left was rubble.

There are any number of explanations of why the Incas built an amazing bunch of buildings at the top of the Andes:

Peruvian archaeologist Cock noted that unlike many cultures today, the Inca did not distinguish between church and state, so the notion that a site could serve dual purposes would not have been unusual.
"For the Incas, the two ideas were integrated," he said. "Anywhere the emperor lived was sacred, because he was sacred." (What Was Machu Picchu For?)

Of course at some point it comes about that the emperor, like the wench, ends up dead, and at that point everyone completely forgets the point of the original buildings, in the same way that some person of the future looking back will admire News Ltd.

Much as we can look back and wonder at Hearst Corporation in its prime. When the emperor lived, he was sacred, and never mind Orson Welles' cheap jokes about rosebuds ...

Not that the recent spate of resignations means there's any chance the world is showing the wolf the door, as noted by Michael Wolff in Rupert Murdoch: is this the beginning of the end? Far from it.

It'll take more than a few resignations and a letter from Dick Smith. Order in copious amounts of garlic, holy water, and large size wooden stakes.

And Kim Williams? He occupies the same space as the anonymous builders who erected and tended Machu Picchu for their emperor ...

Was it only last night that Media Watch remarked on the remarkable capacity of News Ltd to regurgitate the same error like an owl throwing up pellets of exoskeletons, indigestible plant matter, bones, fur feathers, bills, claws and outright stupidity?

Yep, there it is, in Let the misquoting commence, with "controversy" turned into "criticism", and the village gossips all aflutter as they shout at the great aunts on the verandahs, and is the wisteria starting to bloom yet, and is Kensington road still running straight before turning, and this snipe from Jonathan Holmes:

It's a trivial matter, you may think, but it illustrates a weightier point. News Ltd CEO Kim Williams was in Adelaide just ten days ago, celebrating the diversity of news now available even in what used to be a one newspaper town ...

But Kim, it's mot much use having a range of sources, if all they do is regurgitate each other's mistakes.

Indeed. Only matched, it turns out in the same show, by Alan Jones capacity to sound like a horse with his nose in a chaff bag of particularly foul hay ...

Oh yes, a sense of perspective is a wondrous thing, but of course when you're a hack under the hammer at News Ltd, a sense of perspective is the last thing you can imagine ...

In the meantime, daily crimes against humanity and truth are committed with impunity, and every so often someone dares to point out that the emperor has no clothes.

Smith might be an Ozemite gadfly, but by gad there's always room for gadflies, and sand flies, and biting midges (even if they're the same thing), and anything that deflates the pompous is a cause for celebration.

Rupert Murdoch a notch below Nick D'Arcy in the trustworthy stakes?

Kim Williams as a receptacle for abuse?

Is there any other joy to be had?

Well the Wiggles, "children's entertainers", back in 2006 made it to number nine on Australia's most trusted list. (here)

Now they've fallen to 15!

At last Australians are waking up to the gigantic Wiggles conspiracy, right up there with the Chairman Rupert conspiracy!

How strange to think of a warm glow emanating from the pond and embracing readers of the Reader's Digest ...

... if thou shalt indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries. Exodus 23:22

Oops, Jensenism might be catching ...

(Below: the man on the left is more trustworthy than Rupert Murdoch, or so Australian readers of the Reader's Digest assert?

Is that because he isn't packing like his partner? He's only got a hand gun?)

Paul Sheehan, adrift in a sea of spin, or was that business-class seating in a chartered Boeing 757 ...

(Above: signing a deal with an intransigent, inflexible, ruinous inner city elitist devil. Why oh why?)

When the pond last caught up with generally grumpy Paul Sheehan, he was reporting in My plane, my way on his most excellent adventure, cruising the world in a $30,840 a person twin share 22 day equatorial adventure on a chartered business-class Boeing 757 with personal chef, guides, and five star hotels.

Call it the Marie Antoniette principle. Let the readers stick to bread (no, forget the sourdough, white bread will do, they can think themselves lucky it's sliced), while Sheehan gloats in print over his cake.

Reinvigorated, Generalissimo Grumpy Sheehan today steps up to the plate to deliver his standard bit of bile about the federal Labor government, though it does have the air of having been written by rote while the autopilot took charge of the Boeing.

Swinging in breeze over the abyss seizes on a state by-election to heap it on the federal government.

Amongst the targets dragged in for a dose of bile are Sheehan's favourite piñatas, hapless independents Tony Windsor ("lives on borrowed time") and Robert Oakeshott (don't you just love the punitive use of "Robert"), who is "facing electoral oblivion". Sorry Rob, er, we mean Robert, hasta la vista baby.

Throw in Kevin Rudd, Craig Thomson ("let us not forget") and Adam Bandt, and it's scorn, and doom and gloom, a classic outburst from a "born to rule" man who feverishly resents the outcome of a democratic process.

Can you imagine a day when Sheehan spends a column examining critically the thoughts, deeds and policies of Tony Abbott and the opposition, ladling out bile and scorn and righteous indignation?

You can? Why you deserve a slice of cake ...

Meanwhile, over at the punch-drunk The Punch, Tony Maher maintains the Labor party's war on the Greens and greenies and inner city elites, in A sensible carbon scheme, despite those pesky Greens.

Pesky?

Surely the header should have included words like Birkenstock-wearing overlords, a fundamental barrier, and intransigent supporters of policies bad for jobs, costing too much and no fun at all. Oh what killjoys they are ...

Maher spends reams of work explaining how the carbon tax has been cunningly designed to do sweet bugger all, and cushion everyone from any suffering.

It doesn't do much to affect industry - billions of dollars have been spent giving free permits to heavy industry, and no sector has been overlooked. There'll be no excessive price rises, it isn't designed to force consumers to use significantly less energy, and it's designed to give heavy industry a feather tap over decades, a smooth gradualist transition.

Why it's just like Kevin Rudd's grand scheme in 2009. Or perhaps it's Norman Lindsay's Magic Pudding reborn again, so we can all come again and get another slice. Paul Sheehan will be pleased. He so loves his cake and puds and junkets ...

The only fly in this vast ointment of spectacular policy achievement - and the Labor party's failure to sell it - has been the Greens.

Everything's the fault of those intransigent bastards.

No matter how effectively Greg Combet explains the carbon pricing scheme - and when he gets the chance he does it very well - the Greens factor is a fundamental barrier to popular acceptance by ordinary working Australians.
Selling the carbon tax is hard. But beyond Leichhardt or Brunswick, selling the Greens is impossible.

Ah those deviant, perverted inner city elites, how they ruin everything.

Maher's tag notes he's the national president of the CFMEU, but why doesn't the tag also note that he's a national Labor president for stupid arguments?

If it's all the fault of the Greens, if the Greens are so reprehensible and intransigent, if the Greens are responsible for driving an unsellable policy, if the Labor party is doing so splendidly well, which means scraping home by a couple of votes in a Victorian state by-election, what on earth is a federal Labor government doing in bed with them?

Cop this logic:

The 2012 scheme, fundamentally the same but understood by the public as a Greens-negotiated deal, has fuelled the perception it is an extreme measure. It has helped Tony Abbott turn an economically responsible, modest carbon scheme with public support into a hydra-headed monster devouring jobs and starving pensioners.

Uh huh. So it's all the fault of the Greens that Tony Abbott has been so successful, while the honest, responsible, modest Labor party has dithered on the sidelines, unable to explain its wondrous government policies?

It's just as addle-brained a bit of nonsense as Paul Sheehan anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Messiah, when in reality the country is likely soon enough to be run by a very naughty boy ...

While the likes of Sheehan ploughs on, blaming Bandt and the Greens and the independents, Maher ploughs on blaming Bandt and the Greens ...

'Dum, say hello to 'Dee, or should that be, Dumb, say hello to Dumber, and a new movie title ...

If the Labor party really imagines that a "please sir the Greens ate my homework" routine is going to save them say hello to mass delusion ...

This is the way they're going to combat the propaganda spewing out of The Australian, with a recent typical example Henry Ergas's Electorate right about PM's left turn? (behind the paywall, but you know how to google).

AT the heart of Labor's problems is its reaction to the 2010 election. In that election, voters swung to the Right, but thanks to Julia Gillard's deal with the Greens, the government shifted sharply to the Left. Those opposing movements transformed a gap between Labor and the electorate into a chasm. And with voters sceptical of the Prime Minister's trustworthiness from the outset, that chasm now threatens to swallow Labor whole.

Tony Maher, say hello to Henry, you've got so much in common.

And sssh, whatever you do remember that leftism is an evil disease you can catch if you visit the inner city of a big town and mingle with the elite ...

Where it gets even funnier is reading a business class junketer like Sheehan sneering at inner city elites in a rag that sells to inner city elites, and gives said junketer a chance to tour the world in a way many inner city elitists would envy. Here's a typical outburst from 2011:

...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. (here)

The messiah cometh, and he won't be green, because you can care for the environment and the world without being green, or drink coffee ...

Now ponder this.

Is Sheehan an inner city elitist, on the principle that a person that lives like one, and looks like one, and junkets like one, and quacks like one in a rag dedicated to quackery is most likely to be one?

Is Mosman and associated areas on the lower north shore part of an inner city elite, since the median price for a house in the area is around the $1.97 million mark? (here)

Mosman is right in the heart of the division of Warringah, currently held by Tony Abbott, though don't tell it to Gerard Henderson...

Currently the area in which the pond lives has a median price for housing of $802,000 (here).

That's part of being an inner city elite? While Mosman gets off scot free, with a lovely main street of high end clothing?

There's stupidity, and there's rhetorical silliness, and then there's all this jibber jabber about inner city elites, mostly coming from inner city elites, or buggers who are a damn sight richer than your average elitist.

But of course you can't have a go at Tony Abbott for representing the filthy rich lower north shore, that would be class warfare, and we know how the Murdoch elites just hate class warfare. Except of course when waging class warfare on inner city elites.

Conclusion? Just make sure you know how to hit the spin cycle so you can keep on living in Paul Sheehan's and Tony Maher's sea of spin ...

You will of course need an automatic washing machine, but the pond expects you to have one, as any decent elitist would.

Why in the old days it would be a copper and a bit of boiling and for sheer luxury a hand wringer, but still the copious amounts of class envy and bullshit would be in ample supply ...

(Below: has Australian politics and the reporting of it, always been so dumb and simple minded? Afraid so, this poster from the days of Lord Bruce recently caught the pond's eye).

So many questions, so few answers ...

(Above: philistines everywhere, including here. Where's Prince Charles when he's needed?)

Why are the most interesting questions never asked, nor answered on the pond?

Why, for example, did the band the Bamboos choose such a dull mix of new romantic music for this weekend's edition of rage? Why are people fascinated with the eighties and the sounds of synth? Did they miss the agony the first time? Is it still okay for young men to wear non-iron polyester shirts, and stink in the summer and wrinkle the nostrils of women?

Why didn't the BBC arrange for a simultaneous world-wide release of the trilogy The Hollow Crown (Richard II, the two Henry IV's)? Didn't they realise pirates these days are sophisticated Shakespeareans? Why are attempts to do semi-realistic Shakespeare so silly, with fake-looking period extras, despite the presence of Jeremy Irons? Why doesn't Jeremy realise there's still time to flee to the south of France with the pond, so that we could frolic and gambol together, and he could ooze languid vowels and firm consonants over the pond in a riot of sensuality?

Why isn't John Gray's demolition of Slavoj Žižek's book Less than Nothing for the NYRB in The Violent Visions of Slavoj Žižek (currently outside the paywall) on everyone's lips? The pond barely understood the final par, but what a sizzler it is:

In a stupendous feat of intellectual overproduction Žižek has created a fantasmatic critique of the present order, a critique that claims to repudiate practically everything that currently exists and in some sense actually does, but that at the same time reproduces the compulsive, purposeless dynamism that he perceives in the operations of capitalism. Achieving a deceptive substance by endlessly reiterating an essentially empty vision, Žižek’s work—nicely illustrating the principles of paraconsistent logic—amounts in the end to less than nothing.

What to make of Žižek's incoherent response in Slavoj Žižek Responds to His Critics?

Will Zadie Smith's desperately nostalgic plea for libraries and books in The North West London Blues bear any fruit? Is the future of the New York Public library assured in these desperate times?

Why on earth would Christopher Nolan say that the cinema is such an innocent and hopeful place? (here, and many other places). Does he ever watch the movies he makes?

Why did the pond watch Safe House last night, a feeble attempt by Universal to imitate the Bourne trilogy in a Cape Town setting? That's an hour and forty lost forever in a violent miasma of meaningless action ...

How can anyone order 6,000 rounds of .223 and Glock ammo over the intertubes and not a question asked? Why is the United States the most violent and armed society on the planet, making even Afghanistan seem like a kindergarten? Is this the exceptional society that Tony Abbott sucks up to? Why does it make the pond's ancient wartime .303 souvenir seem like driving a Model T Ford?

There are millions of interesting questions, and yet week in, week out, the pond spends time with commentariat gnats who couldn't answer an interesting question, let alone swat a fly with a fly swatter ...

Who could possibly think Miranda the Devine, Piers "Acker Dacker" Ackerman and Christopher Pearson have a single useful insight into the way the world works, let alone the cosmos? They'd be lucky to have a particle accelerator that stretched a metre ...

It took a supreme act of stupidity on the part of the Devine to blame the ructions in the Cross on a drug injection centre, while downplaying the role of alcohol and people being bussed in to get as pissed as parrots. Why is News Ltd a vortex for stupidity?

And on the weekends why does the pond choose to spend its time with Sydney Anglicans, homophobic and misogynist men who make the world a worse rather than a better place?

Why, oh long absent lord, why the forty days and nights in the desert of arid thinkers, why did you abandon the pond?

Oh never mind, the pond sees that by asking salient questions, it's almost possible to filibuster the Sydney Anglicans out of existence. Still, it has to be noted that Russell Powell continues at his most adolescent and spiteful best, by berating the "ultra-liberal Episcopal Church", and repeating Elton John's admission his son would be heart-broken not to have a mummy, before unleashing this (here):

Yes. Obviously. Even the Sydney Morning Herald said this week Marriage leads to children - gay marriage leads to surrogacy.

Even the most cretinous reader would realise that it was actually an opinion piece, written by Michael Cook, the biased editor of a "bioethics newsletter BioEdge" which cloaks its conservative credentials under grand-sounding titles, including being a "columnist for Australasian Science".

For the Sydney Morning Herald to have said it, it would have had to have been an editorial. Such petty distortions fill the Sydney Anglican site, full as it is with self-pity, paranoia and the desire to persecute gays.

There's a fundamentalist evangelical old testament aura that festers in Sydney Anglicans, exemplified by banner-headlining Michael Kellahan harking back to eighth century BC prophet Isaiah romping through the kingdom of Judah:

I’m preaching through Isaiah at the moment and have been struck afresh by the failure of God’s people to trust him. Instead, as passages like Isaiah 2:6-22 show, they seek to make themselves great without God. They bring in superstitions from the east, and pagan divination like the Philistines. They boast in their treasuries and chariots and go the way of idolatry.

Which naturally leads to a typical paranoid Sydney Anglican conclusion:

Before we are too quick to condemn God’s people of old, it is worth meditating on how often we make precisely the same moves. There is a terrible temptation for churches to find their confidence and strength in things which the world around also values and find appealing. So we’ll boast in our architecture, our strategic plans, and our technology. Or we’ll find confidence in positive press, or the numbers who come along, or an impressive leader.

Yes, it's so much more to the point to blather on about what an eighth century BC prophet thought about his imaginary friend than have a Sydney Anglican website on the intertubes beaming its primitivism to the world ...

And what do the Sydney Anglicans use to illustrate this very short column highlighting an ancient and irrelevant text?

Which reminds the pond of our greatest threat.

The danger of paying attention to the Sydney Anglicans.

The other stories in the banner feature the attempts by Sydney Anglicans to stir up mischief in Mozambique and Fiji, and you can read them here and here, but only if you sign a full acknowledgment that you have been warned before you follow the links.

Why is it that the Sydney Anglicans hare off overseas when their message is being ignored at home, and their domestic membership falling despite their missionary endeavours? Or perhaps, when you look at the way they approach sex, is it because of their missionary endeavours?

Questions, questions, but you have to admit the illustration perfectly captures the essence of head in sand thinking, ostrich posing of the kind favoured by Sydney Anglicans ...

There are other questions of course, which have no immediate answer. Is the stench of corruption in Rome so vile and all-encompassing that we might never ever receive another homily from Cardinal Pell in the Sunday Terror? His last was a letter from Assisi in May ...

And why has Michael Jensen emerged on The Blogging Parson only a few days ago to write On word studies when his masterpiece for the Sydney Anglicans, the 7 Sins of Sydney, remains stalled at sin 4, silent since April, a silence which seems almost Pellist?

Could his piece on word studies be a side-swipe at Alan Austin's amusing piece for The Drum, 'One in spirit': same-sex unions in the Bible, wherein cleaving, oathing and disrobing are put to excellent use, as is the Greek word "pais"?

But the biggest question of all remains. How is it possible to take the Sydney Anglicans seriously?

And that's enough questions to mediate on this Sunday ...

We'll have to leave the question as to whether the London Olympics is going to be a whining, whingeing grey London security and strike-bound disaster for another day, but if it is, the pond will be forced to pay reluctant attention, and what a disaster that will be.

Could it all go well so that sensible people can ignore it completely?

(Below: but at least that final question allows the pond to run a Steve Bell cartoon, found here).

In which the pond contemplates Catholics and contraception and sex and pain and love and death and the world population and the whole damn thing ...

The world wide web of useless things is endlessly rewarding.

There are, for example, any number of places you can go to for a world population clock, updating by the minute.

The United States Census bureau provides one here for the world and the good old USA. When the pond clocked in, the world stood at 7,027,519,356, and growing, no matter what a crazed gunman in Colorado might do to try to wind things back (and US gun laws and wild west attitudes and the grip of the NRA lobby will help others to make a contribution to insanity).

And then there's the projections, which bring out all sorts of numbers. At the high end of the scale, there's been talk that instead of levelling off around 9 billion by 2050, the population of the planet might reach 10.1 billion by 2100 and keep growing (here for the UN Population division projection).

And then there's the projections for specific regions, such as Africa.

Sub-Saharan Africa's current population, at 856m, is little more than Europe's and a fifth of Asia's. By 2050 it could be almost three times Europe's and by 2100 might even be three-quarters of the size of Asia. By any measure, Africa is by far the fastest-growing continent. (The Economist, here).

This might disturb some, noting a world with limited resources and already struggling to cope with the pressures produced by number of people on the planet.

But if you're running a Ponzi scheme, it's great news. What you need for the pyramid to keep working is people joining at the base, so the more people to hand, the better the chance of keeping the scheme going before eventually the whole thing collapses.

Has there ever been a better Ponzi scheme than the Catholic church, replete with apologists ready to explain how the world needs more people because the Catholic church needs more converts?

Come on down, Joel Hodge, lecturer in the faculty of Theology and Philosophy at the Australian Catholic University's St Patrick's campus, Melbourne, and contributor of Sex isn't about consequences to the ABC's The Drum, thereby confirming that the taxpayer-funded site is a uselessly noisy showcase for the most regressive and conservative thinking doing the rounds. If somebody's prepared to write something for free, The Drum is ready to put it out into the ether ...

Only a theological Catholic, in the grip of Jesuitical casuistry, could deliver such an excellent example of muddled, muddied thinking.

The thing to note is that in past times Catholics tended to love their sex, and often fornicated like rabbits, on the theory that a trip to confession and a few prayers would keep the gates of heaven open.

Perhaps the most useful thing to arise from the rutting days, and parishioners consorting with priests was the work of Boccaccio's divinely earthy Decameron (with links to texts):

If she'll no more her mortar lend,

My pestle shall not it attend;

Thus parted, what's her mortar's use,

Alone it cannot sauce produce.

The wife, indignant at the joke,

To her confessor never spoke,

Until the vintage months began,

Which time she through the vineyards ran.

Though threat'ning him long while with hell,

All matters terminated well ...

Instead of five quid, the Master Priest gets to dip his wick for the price of a new skin on Belcolore's tabaret, fitting it with a little bell.

Sorry, the pond just wandered off for a bit - what a revelation Boccaccio was when growing up a Catholic. Women with lusty appetites, fucking and enjoying it, and priests always ready to rock 'n roll. Pick me Father Clarke, pick me ...

Back to dour old theological Hodge:

In the West, we implicitly accept the meaning of contraception. In other words, when we talk about contraception, we value it as morally permissible. In doing this, we accept that it is permissible to prevent the natural end of sexual intimacy: the fruitfulness of children and family.
Of course, not all sex leads to pregnancy, but clearly one of the ends of sex is procreation and the perpetuation of the species.

Perpetuation of the species means blessing the planet with ten billion people plus? While peddling the old nonsense about Adam and Eve?

These days the church frowns on hearty fucking, which can be enjoyed as a recreational activity, but also offers the benefits of good physical exercise and a reduction in neuroses (nine out of ten pond customers report intense satisfaction from sex and a good lie down).

Reprimand us Mr. Hodge, lash us for our wickedness:

Since the sexual revolution, this end has been obscured by the other ends that have become more focused on: sexual intimacy and pleasure. In other words, we have changed the meaning of sex so it is primarily focused on relationality, intimacy and pleasure.

Shocking. Sex that involves relationships, intimacy and pleasure. Is there no end to the decadence?

When we remove a natural end from an act, we change the act itself. In other words, when we take procreation out, we change the meaning of sex. In particular, we change it in terms of our intentions, ends and consequences.

Yes, for two thousand years or more, straights incapable of having children have been incapable of meaningful sex. As for gays ... well let's not go there, lest Mr. Hodge have to avert his eyes.

We have seen this in the West over the past 50 years: sex is increasingly seen as a private, individual affair for one's own use or for the expression of a relationship. This view is radically different from views of the past and from the views of most cultures in the world today.

Yep, fundamentalist Islamic cultures rulz.

Never mind those pack-raping dolphins and those kinky Antarctic penguins, Mr. Hodge knows the meaning of sex in the natural world, and it perforce involves guilt, sin and wickedness, and is best done in a cabbage patch with eyes closed and clothes on, and the next thing you know nine months later there's a baby in the cabbage patch, and do it ten times and enlist the entire tribe in the Catholic church and your work in this world can then be judged meaningful and useful.

We could go on and on, but the nub, the point, the lump, the protuberance, the gist, the stub, the bulge, the jutting hump, the protrusion, the swelling gibbous argument of the rest of the piece can be summarised thusly:

1. Contraception is baaad.

2. Condoms are baad.

You'll find this sort of idle chatter dressed up in a delightfully theological way:

Condoms and contraceptives played an ambiguous role: they were promoted as a last resort, but it has also been found that they encourage more risky behaviours, linked to higher rates of infection.
In the light of this evidence, is contraception, then, just a quick fix that accords with a dominant discourse in the West? Rather than addressing problems, are we just replacing one dominant cultural discourse around sex with another?

Dominant cultural discourse? Oh wash out your relativist post-modernist mouth with soap.

Naturally Mr. Hodge has an alternative. Natural family planning:

One area that may be a middle road - that addresses the deaths of women and children as well as respecting local cultural autonomy - is natural family planning. Natural family planning has increased greatly in its effectiveness to manage fertility, pregnancy and disease, and it also encourages an equalisation of gender relations, where men and women take responsibility for sex and the management of their family through a cooperative approach.

There is of course just one problem, as members of the pond's family have in the past discovered. Vatican roulette doesn't work. Well it does work, but only in the sense that at some point the house will win, and in due course there'll be another member of the Ponzi scheme arriving. How does Mr. Hodge deal with a stacked house, a fixed wheel and a tilted deck?

It is important that when discussing ethical problems we don't just focus on consequences. We can bring together an authentic ethical meaning and process with good consequences.

That's right, with blather. Mr. Hodge is especially big on abstinence as a way forward for Africans, perhaps because it's worked so well with priests when they come across a nubile young boy with pert buttocks.

The empirical results show that good outcomes can be achieved by methods that support meaningful ethical approaches. Thus, when considering family planning and contraception, we need to be aware of the underlying meaning of sex and relationships. We need to respect and develop good empirical data, which allows us to see the effects of our philosophical-ethical approach.

Uh huh. Let's see how Texas handles empirical data. It turns out that in the United States, the highest rate of teenage pregnancies occurs in states where abstinence-only education is standard. (States with abstinence-only education have higher teen pregnancy rates).

Some of the information fed to students is comprehensively bizarre, and a reminder of why Australia doesn't need to fawn and simper at the feet of the US in the manner of a Tony Abbott.

On the other hand, the US does have Gail Collins as a columnist, and here she is on Texas:

Quite a bit of the information Texas students are getting seems to have arrived from another era. An abstinence-only program used in three districts assures them that “if a woman is dry, the sperm will die”—which harks back to Colonial-era theories that it was impossible for a woman to get pregnant unless she enjoyed the sex. There are repeated suggestions that premarital sex could have fatal consequences—reminiscent of the 1950s’ legends about couples who had illicit sex in the backseat of a car and then were murdered by the Lovers' Lane Maniac. (A video used in three Texas districts has a boy asking an evangelical educator what will happen if he has sex before marriage. “Well, I guess you’ll have to be prepared to die,” is the response.)

So how's the horror movie shame game working?

Slightly more than half of 9th- to 12th-graders reported having had sex in 2009—higher than the national figure of 46 percent. By the time they’re seniors, 69 percent of Texas students are sexually active, and they indulge in risky behavior like sex with a large number of partners at rates higher than the national average. (Gail Collins on Texas's Abstinence Sex Education Problems).

So now we can amend the pond's empirical data. Young Catholics, evangelicals and Texans fuck like rabbits.

Over to you Mr. Hodge:

Yet, we should never lose sight that human activity is not just about consequences but about meanings. Sex is not just about consequences but the meaning it has for those engaged in it and for our society.

Oh dear. More blather. Is that all you've got?

It is no good to seek good consequences if we undermine the ethical and cultural foundations in which humans live. To lose the meaning of sex as has happened in the West to some degree (where we only see sex as an individualistic affair to be regulated, rather than a sacred, relational act for the good of those engaged in it and for the building of families and society) has consequences for our young people and society (as recent data is showing). Thus, we should be careful about how we construct the meaning of sex, because we may actually get what we wish for.

Construct the meaning of sex? Building families and societies and a condom-, contraception-free Catholic church world so we can top the ten billion mark on the planet?

Through the fog of blather, the pond paused only to note one of many negative comments beneath the piece, suggesting that the Ponzi scheme logic was falling on deaf ears, and people were no longer buying:

Only a religious person would have such a complex and confused view of sex and family planning.
To everyone else it's straightforward, practical, ethical and sensible.
When religious groups oppose family planning and contraception (in developing nations in particular), it is bewildering, nonsensical, and frankly, cruel.

Well said Jay Kay, but how could the pond resist throwing in Frank Zappa. Take it away Frank:

Catholic girls
With a tiny little mustache
Catholic girls
Do you know how they go?
Catholic girls
In the rectory basement
Father Riley's a fairy
But it don't bother Mary
Catholic girls
At the CYO
Catholic girls
Do you know how they go?
Catholic girls
There can be no replacement
How do they go, after the show?

Joe:
All the way
That's the way they go
Every day
And none of their mamas ever seem to know
Hip-hip-hooray
For all the class they show
There's nothing like a catholic girl
At the CYO
When they learn to blow...

Oh heck, if you've ever been a Catholic girl or a Catholic boy who doesn't understand the first thing about condoms and personal responsibility and sex education, yet can't get the hang of abstinence and chastity, why not sing along: