David Burchell, The Ruddster, Malcolm in the middle and the perils of Adelaide

An exceptionally quiet day on loon pond, with the only signs of restlessness a mild flap over at The Australian as David Burchell tries to grapple with ways to destroy the Ruddster in Too many authors get Rudd into a write mess.

You have to feel sorry for the loons as they work out that neo liberalism is dead and that, sadly too true, "the Howard government became the largest dispenser of purely passive welfare entitlements since Federation".

Indeedy. And how my heart reaches out for them when forced to write of "that suffocating burden of pious cant that so often deflects centre-leftists from the complicated (and often unwelcome) reality of the world around them".

Oh yes indeedy. Maybe that kind of cant is kissing cousin to the other kind - you know "that suffocating burden of pious cant that so often deflects centre-rightists from the complicated (and often unwelcome) reality of the world around them".

None of them seem to have noticed that the world is in an economic meltdown, spiralling out of control as a result of their worship of George Bush and the dumb greedy fucks that drove America and the rest of the world into the ground these eight past years. And that blaming the Clintons no longer cuts it. The worst result since the great depression.

That's how you end up with a Ruddster. That's how your team gets some time on the sidelines worrying that no one follows your plays anymore (go Steelers).

Oh the tragedy, to have to listen to the Ruddster, perhaps the dullest, most opaque, Christian, tedious, pious, bureaucratic and painful Rooster of them all. Well, do I care? There wasn't much name-calling as the Titanic went down (they even allowed the band to play on), and it's fun to see the cantists get excited about an article in The Monthly. Won't somebody spare a dime or a thought for Quadrant - has someone got a new Piltdown hoax, anything, to get the circulation back up to a thousand?

Over at The Sydney Morning Herald, things go from worse to bizarre. There's Paul Sheehan, intermittent loon, saying that the voters might well prefer Napoleon Rudd when the alternative is Malcolm Bonaparte. (Which chameleon do you prefer?)

Is this the first time that someone has noticed just how badly Malcolm Turnbull is doing, not just in the polls but in the general tedium surrounding a hot, muggy January? Turnbull once got by as a kind of dog whistling moderate with a past littered with fuck ups in republicanism and fixing up the flag, but ever since we heard that Chris Kenny, an Adelaide hack with right wing views on global warming and so on was appointed Malcolm's chief of staff, we've been thinking that there's been a conscious decision to steer the good ship Turnbull onto the reefs of right wing ratbaggery. 

Kenny was at one time an adviser to Alexander Downer, and if that doesn't give you a whiff of the way things work in Adelaide, you'll need to go live there for awhile. Second thoughts, life's way too short, as that humble rock star Ben Folds discovered when he married an Adelaide gal.

If you can stand the pain you can still find Kenny's scribbles in The Advertiser, once a proud broadsheet with North Terrace views but now turned into a tabloid of the most vulgar kind by its American owner (yep, taken over and wrecked, just as The News killed The News, the original Adelaide tabloid rag, when there was a buck to be made over sentiment).

And here's the funny thing. Not a word about Costello turning to god on Australia Day. Well that should give Malcolm some comfort. He can fuck up at his leisure, get shafted by Sheehan, ignored by the public, and generally disparaged without half the grief faced by that hang faced hound Brendan Nelson. And up against a tin rooster with feet of clay who fancies himself as a political theorist, and who sends the neo liberals into a frenzy, only to kill them, stupefy them, with boredom. Life can be cruel.

But it could be worse. You could be living in Adelaide. Take it away Ben:

Adelaide

On a plane

Far from the united states

of LA

Dropping in from outer space

Takes a day

Now I see the Bogans

At the motor race

Here you know the world could turn

Or crash and burn

And you would never know it

Going where the air is clear

There's better beer in Adelaide ...

(and so on down to)

And you know the earth could turn

Or crash and burn

And you would never now it.

Really got to make it to the finish line

Get the record done on time

Pack the bags

And catch a flight

And you can kiss my ass goodbye

On Adelaide.

(Once saw Ben play the Enmore. Gee he and his team were good, tight, rocking, energy plus, pounding away at the piano like it deserved to be nuked, and then brain snap - Ben went to Adelaide. Deary me, how even the righteous can take the wrong path).

So don't trust me, trust the newly reformed, turned wise by experience, Adelaide 'kiss my arse' departed, Paul Kelly and Ben Folds. 

They know how to rock in the suburbs, or is it just that they know that somebody, say Malcolm, is a brick sinking slowly. Trust the boys who know how to rock Malcolm, and keep Chris Kenny and his weird Adelaide ways at a safe distance.