Saturday, September 6, 2008

Duffy, Palin and the lovin' of dumb gun totin' anti abortionist pro creationist god fearin' wymmin

"Nothing is but what is not", said Macbeth, as he made a few miscues with prophecies, and it's got to be said that Michael Duffy, fearless defender of outsiders, is truly a veritable Macbeth of columnists.

Why only two weeks ago, Duffy was hailing Morris Iemma as a great politician, and the redemptive future of NSW politics, cleaning up the system for the good of all. Two weeks later, and Iemma is a feather duster, out to tend the chooks, look after the kids and become a house husband (thereby conforming to Duffy's idea of a real man, the kind you find in Alaska). I guess it's a warning, if you've been blessed by Duffy, beware the Ides of March. His touching you on the shoulder with approval is a bit like getting to hold the monkey's paw - be careful of what you wish for.

Sadly we can't tell you how Duffy's column this week - "Palin whacks and gives the hoi polloi a bone" - is placed in the physical Sydney Morning Herald, since we're boycotting such an anti Mike Carlton rag, nor can we link to it in the digital realm, since any increase in hits on his column induced by this blog would generate traffic suggesting Duffy is worth a read (however remote a possibility any stray, random reader with better things to do would click through to the musings of Macbeth). 

I did attempt to find out by ringing a friend, who had broken the ban, and bought the Herald, but they refused to say, and I abused them for being pro-management, and the conversation ended in tears with me none the wiser, and a friendship shot. Beware of the powerful destructive forces unleashed by the Duffy. Well at least I could apply the loose change to the purchase of the 60th year celebration edition of The Phantom for my partner, and given the eleven bucks that Frew demanded for this nonsense, it was just as well.

Meanwhile, back to Duffy, who this week is in fine jovial form. Sarah Palin has lifted his spirits. He even opens with a 'Sarah Palin, you beauty' worthy of a supporter of the bunnies - which is to say the louder the crowe-ing cheer, the heavier the loss. It's worth quoting Duffy at length - and saving you the click through: "I haven't derived so much pleasure from politics since Pauline Hanson erupted onto the scene. Politics isn't principally about pleasure of course, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't enjoy it when we can. Palin might win or lose, but she's already done plenty just by turning up. The visceral response to her from many on the left has been wonderful to watch."

And there you have it in a nutshell. Duffy doesn't really care about Palin, he just cares about sticking it up the left. Politics is a sport, you just hate and cheer and jeer. Here's hoping he's a Doggies supporter.

Why a quintessentially dumb redhead fish and chips seller and latterly television show star like Pauline Hanson should also light his wick will have to remain deeply shrouded in Freudian mystery - unless, unless Duffy actually likes his women dumb and loud and vacuous and red-headed from the bottle, as an antidote to poisoning of his healthy bodily fluids by way of lesbian left wing feminist guile? (How did Gen Jack D. Ripper phrase it, about the physical act of love "a profound sense of fatigue ... a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I ... I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence ... Women uh ... women sense my power and they seek the life essence. I, uh, ... I do not avoid women, Mandrake ... But I ... I do deny them my essence").

Behind his infatuation with Palin and Hanson is a typical Duffy rant about diversity and tolerance and the tolerance police, and how Palin is invigorating because she's gun toting and anti-abortion. You see Duffy is all in favour of diversity and tolerance, except that diversity and tolerance leads to tolerance which leads to intolerance, which can't be tolerated, so we need to step back, take a deep breath, and understand just how bad tolerance and diversity is, because it creates intolerance, especially in Duffy, because he can't stand to be tolerated, because, let's face it, his views are intolerable.

Well bugger me, I thought Palin was just a feisty Assembly of God, god fearing, Republican out of towner redneck on the make to become an in-towner, a cynical ploy to try to crack on to disaffected Hillary voters, and if elected, a heartbeat away from the Presidency, with all the experience you can muster from organising earmarks and a town of nine thousand people (badly so it seems since she seems to have left it in debt, Bush style).

Duffy does allow himself a minor reality check - it might all end in tears but while it lasts it's a lot of fun - but he never exactly explains why having a 'teach the controversy' Creationist as President (with Iraq as God's war) would be be any more fun than having a mad Mullah in charge of an Islamic country.

But once Duffy gets on his libertarian song, he's determined to list off all the things that are never discussed because of the thought police and their control of intolerable beliefs. Let's look at the list:

Length of jail sentences. Presumably Duffy is in favour of throwing them in the clink, throwing away the key and letting them rot in the dark for life. No wonder the USA is such an inspiration to him, since they know how to treat uppity blacks. Now why were we getting upset about the Chinese regime again? Please explain.

But wait, no Duffy's real concern is the death sentence. After all keeping people in prison is expensive and counter productive and frankly not desiccated enough for an economic rationalist.  Well it goes without saying, string 'em up and let God sort out the innocent. He's the only one with perfect DNA testing (no you dumb feminists with your 'She', she's a he, unless maybe God decided being a tranny was the only way to understand both sides of the story, in which case please use shemale god/ess).

Then there's smoking - yes, go get cancer, and make sure you take out private medical insurance, because why the hell should you get treated on the public purse, you bludging suicidal socialists. Oh wait, Duffy doesn't actually think that far down the track, he's just worried about the persecution of death wish coffin nail suckers preventing them from doing what they like, including doing over the taxpayer and the medical system while big tobacco banks the profits. Yep, always socialise the profits.

Then there's immigration - well I say kick them out, the lot of them, and the blacks can get out as well because they've only been here for only 40-60,000 years. In particular, anyone with a Celtic name like Duffy can be sent back to the bogs of Ireland to eat potato mash and brood. None of this last on, first off nonsense. And as the water rises from global warming and we sink into the sea, go drown on your Pacific island while we float on our raft. (Of course Parker is an English name for keeper of the park, so who's better than I to stay and keep this soil sacred for England).

Then there's the environment. Let it flood, I say, and go underwater, who can interfere with my alienable right to drive on Duffy's premium priced motorways. Fill the landscape full of filth, despoil it, ship it off to China, and stop these yabbering do gooders babbling about how they're getting cancer from the avgas dropping all over the western suburbs. They should think themselves lucky they're so close to the airport, ready to pollute the air as they zoom to Bali. Which of course brings in another subject that shouldn't be discussed, namely climate change.

And then of course there's welfare, but only last week Duffy was busy pointing out how the intellectually handicapped could be set to profitable work (a point that seemed to upset the head of the charity, but all that can be said on this is beware the company that you keep, because what might seem like good news to some is actually an ideological axe to grind for others).

So Palin is the cherished celebrant of all these proscribed ideas - kill the moose, wipe out the polar bear, dig up the oil, save the babies, promote abstinence-based schemes to avoid teenage pregnancy. No wonder left-wing feminists are discomfited. What a valiant fighter for truth and justice. And then, according to Duffy, they have the cheek to say she's not a real feminist, but Hillary is - especially as Palin's got a husband who's going to stay at home and look after the kids, while all Hillary has got is Bill, and worse, she doesn't like to suck his cock. (sorry, Duffy didn't say that, he writes for a family paper, but if you follow his logic, that's where it ends - Palin, you see, has a real man for a husband, a member of the United Steelworkers Union and a champion snow machine racer, and she's got five kids. Gee, they must have a great sex life, and gee, suddenly Duffy likes a unionist. Will wonders never cease).

Yep, according to the Duffy, it's great that Palin offends feminists, and  most importantly, just like Hanson, a fairly ordinary person has somehow made it into the public eye. Now just think on what that inverted, perverted sentence means. "A fairly ordinary person". Oh you mean the Governor of a state of the United States of America? Why I have a beer with one of them every week down at the RSL club. Or get takeaway chips from them every Sunday night. Dumb as dishwater, and fairly ordinary, but therefore eminently qualified to be a heart beat away from the presidency of the United States of America. Just like McCain's wife. Now there's an ordinary person in ordinary clothes with ordinary jewellery worth a cool quarter million. (Didn't Harry Truman run a haberdashery? So that's the way to find someone not frightened to drop the bomb on your enemies and hasten the end times and bring on the rapture. Come on down George Bush and Sarah Palin).

Now before we go any further, let me assure you that I love to fire off the .303 we have from the war years. The gut thump of the recoil, the smell of the cordite. And me just a lit'l ol' Aussie girl from the bush. I've killed my share of lapin, broken their necks with a twist or a chop, trapped their legs in hard cold steel, torn them open at the guts and yanked out their entrails, smelled the stench of liverish myxomatosis, and eaten of their flesh over pagan fires. I've gone on kangaroo hunts and killed the national icon and never once woken in fright. But I've never thought it was somehow unique or meaningful, it's just what country folks do, and it doesn't qualify you for anything, gun toting that is, unless you happen to be taking a shot at the Olympics. (And remember it was that bastard John Howard and his Liberal sidekicks who restricted our right to bear arms, and Labour who's in good with the gun club boys as they claw back some concessions).

But back to Duffy. Right at the moment you think he's willing to have a reality check, he has to go and ruin the effect - "If you read her acceptance speech you would be struck by the fundamental absurdity of the way Palin is, in effect, running against her own party with all her rhetoric against the 'Washington elite'".

Does Duffy ever pause to ponder his own ineffable, incomprehensible fundamental absurdity?So consumed by hatred and fear of leftists and feminists is he, that he becomes a Yoda-like cheerleader for politicians who say white when they mean black, and vice versa.

But Duffy recovers for a final flourish - a woman spouting words that are fundamentally absurd is just the right sort of person to ask tough questions about Barack Obama and his experience, especially when she's been a two time mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, population somewhere between seven and nine thousand souls. Of course she would. She knows enough not to eat the yellow snow, and when she says scat she doesn't mean go away.

"Of course, it would be wonderful for a black man to become the president of the United States. But other than the colour of his skin and his smooth tongue, just what qualifications does he really have for the job?" concludes Duffy.

And there you have it, the capper for the article, the final sentence. No argument, just a question, an insinuation. A low blow which would see a boxer doing ten with Socrates lose the round. It seems Obama's only got to where he's got because he's black and he's got a smooth tongue. Not like the immensely qualified Palin, who thinks creationism has a lot going for it, and thinks abstinence education is the way to stop 17 year olds from fucking around and getting pregnant (and as America has been doing for years, wants to ship this kind of philosophy abroad).

In a way, it's fitting. Duffy stands bare in that final sentence, smug, smarmy, deceptive and destructive, the true negatarian, in the company of Pauline Hanson, a racist and a vagabond. His real inspiration isn't libertarian politics, his heart is way back with Arthur Calwell and the White Australia policy, a time when women stayed in the kitchen and if they came out, it was only so they could shoot a moose or a lapin for their man, then go back inside and cook it.

Riddle me this: if what's needed is small government, which doesn't intrude into people's personal lives, why is it all right for a government to ban abortion for women? Is having a baby part of the Ayran mission, part of the way to expand and get lebensraum, a duty to government and god and Peter Costello, and not a personal activity. Please explain.

It must truly be strange to be inside Duffy's head. We can only marvel at the opportunity the Herald provides to the world, and wonder why anybody would spring for cash for the insight, when the Internet is full of commentators provided free - try Colbert or Jon Stewart for starters on the wonders of Palin over at the Comedy Channel. Unlike Duffy, who's a humor free zone, it will boost your day and give you a laugh or three.

So it's on to the scorecard, and truly Duffy was in exceptional form this week. Duffy, you beauty, hold on to those bodily essences and sock it to those feminists:

Quality of rhetoric against lesbian left wing latte sipping feminists: 10
Support of creationism and smoking: 10
Love of a good hanging, denial of climate change and wog hating: 10
Hatred of diversity and tolerance: 11
Actual usefulness in digging America out of the hole created by Republicans these last eight years: 0
Smooth tongued denunciation of a black man without any substantiation of argument: 11

By the way, just what does the title of Duffy's piece mean? "Palin whacks and gives the hoi polloi a bone". Was it provided by a subbie with a sense of humor? Do they still employ any at Fairfax? 

"With a knick knack, Paddy Whack, Give the dog a bone" is too obvious a reference. There's something more abstruse, subtle that's going on here. Is Duffy aware that hoi polloi is a derogatory term for the masses, his favourite 'ordinary people', as bad as saying unwashed minions, plebeians, proletariat rabble, rank and file peons, riffraff, or the common herd? Still maybe hinting at calling them doggies is a hidden clue. He really is a Doggies supporter, just one forced to live in the land of the Eastern suburbs. 

No, surely it's not that simple. Is there some kind of Freudian meaning to giving the hoi polloi a bone? Is it covert wording for boner? Or are we talking moose bone here? Or is it just that Duffy is getting a boner over Palin whacking the feminists? Does he dream in the night of feminists being whipped? Is the real meaning Palin whacks the feminists and that gives me, an ordinary person and Doggies supporter, a boner?

I'm afraid it's all too deep and clever for me, will have to retire to the Algonquin for a cup of tea laced with gin, and a little tongue kissing with my friend from Park Slope.

Meantime the boycott of the Herald continues. Will someone let me know if Carlton returns to the fold?




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